Father and son keep professing in the family

The Nolans teach tag-team accounting classes at Chaminade

If you see Professor Richard yelling at Professor Nolan, don't worry -- they've been at it all their lives.

Richard and Nolan Kido are a father-son teaching team at Chaminade University of Honolulu. The son teaches the lower concentration accounting classes, then sends them up the track to his father, who insists he never coerced his son to get into accounting.

"He got interested through no fault of mine," Richard said.

"What he's saying is he never helped me with my homework," Nolan interjected. "I distinctly remember saying, 'I never want to be an accountant because my dad does boring stuff all the time.'"

Now 27, Nolan does financial analysis for a real estate company, and has been teaching at the university for two years.

"When the opportunity for teaching one class opened up, naturally I thought of my son because he majored in accounting," said the 53-year-old father.

Though the two don't live together, their offices are side by side, so they can't help but talk shop as part of their relationship. Through his father, Nolan said he knows what he needs to focus on through his teaching.

"One of the main things is I teach the undergrads, the first-level courses for anyone who majors in accounting," Nolan said. "I talk to my father often, because I need to know what subjects to focus on. The people going on to his classes, they have to have that foundation."

Richard's main focus is doing research in accounting for nonprofit organizations and experiential learning.

The pair said they're often critical of each other's course planning, the father especially.

"I'm always yelling at him if he doesn't get his focus straight," Richard said.

But Nolan argues that he has the tougher job, despite the easier subject. That's because he teaches green students who may be feeling out the accounting emphasis and are still trying to figure out what they want to be now that they've grown up.

"So he only gets the people who are good at accounting, and like it," Nolan said.

Working with dad isn't weird as Nolan originally thought it'd be, although the father, a senior member of the faculty, said, "It is kind of weird in a way that I kind of supervise him. It's not a normal supervisor-employee relationship, obviously."

"What he means to say is he feels more freedom to yell at me," Nolan said, laughing.

"I can be more critical of him since I've been yelling at him all his life," Richard continued. "However other than being more open, I don't think it's different than any other teachers or department. It's just a normal working relationship."

But the open relationship has been good for both of their academic pursuits, they said. Nolan said it's often hard to communicate differences with other personalities, often walking on eggshells in conversations rather than being direct.

"In this case, if I don't like his idea, or he doesn't like mine, we just say it, we fix it, it's better, that's it," Nolan said.